Mary Grace Bertulfo

    Worked for many years at Flying Fish Folk Records. We had a record distributor who would show up in an old pickup and load up the milk crates with LPs. He was always talking about Val’s Halla in Oak Park. When I finally moved here, 15 years later, there it was — still [...]

It started out innocently enough… Beach Boys 8-track tapes and 45s from Ben Franklins, but it wasn’t long before I wanted to concentrate on the great format of 331/3 rpm records.   Ben Franklins had it’s charms, but not the focus of a real, independent record store.   My Freshman year of High School was [...]

I don’t have any long history with Val, but I am happy to add my admiration and congratulations, too! Just a few months ago, actually, I was in there asking her about some particular dance rhythm.  How can some novice like me today understand the popular dance rhythms of the early rock-n-roll era…  She told [...]

The year was 1986. I was 16 the first time I saw Cory Aquino on television. She was leading a seemingly endless parade of prayerful, frightened, but determined people in Manila, calling for the dictator Ferdinand Marcos to step down. This event has been called “The People Power Revolution” and also “The Bloodless Revolution”. She [...]